[Guide] Installing AMD Radeon Mobility 6970 / 6990 in your M17x R2 (Single GPU and CrossfireX)

orite bro.. tqvm

 

Guide updated with mediafire link below for VBIOS files. Just in case,

6970m.zip

 

Awesome! Thanks Ichime...I've got them saved already, but always good to have them out there just in case

 

Ok so I've given under volting my card a shot, edited vbios in RBE saved and flashed (went fot 0.96v) accross the 3 profiles were it had volts to edit.

Now in gpu-z and hwinfo64 it shows as 0.00 volts?

 

Hi guys,

Just an FYI for those who aren't aware. If you send in a card for RMA to Clevo, be certain there is a problem with the card. If they are unable to determine if it's faulty then you are responsible for shipping there and back. Not so bad if it's in your same country, but if you have to send it overseas it can be very very expensive, just please be aware of this.

 

i guess its the same for all of us

 

I would like to thank all that have contributed to this thread it has been a very intersting read and my particular thanks go to ichime for starting it and giving it a go in the first place. Well done mate.

I have decided I would like to give it a go myself and fit a pair of 6990 cards, if I can get my hands on them, or 6970's if not but I have a couple of reservations. Because I use my laptop in an office and I need the fans to work quietly I have decided I need to get my hands on a pair of Clevo cards and I have already asked my Clevo dealer if they will sell me a pair. I am on fairly good terms with them as I have bought several computers from them in the past.

My concerns are based around the throttling experienced by some and the fact my CPU, an i7-940XM, is already fairly power hungry. I have no intention of ever overclocking anything so that is not an issue for me but I do game a lot at home. So my question is do people that have done this think I will be able to fit a couple of 6990's with no resulting throttling?

 

Just finished reading all 191 pages, really useful info spread between the pages
thank you guys for all the effort you put into this

will receive the cards tomorrow and will install them as soon as I can

 

Good luck ahmadmud!

Hope it all goes well.

 

thanks wolf, just still a bit confused on where do I use thermal pads
I've seen a couple of opinions but still not sure what is the optimal use

 

Well, I've done it different ways. Thermal pads on the memory chips obviously and some folks leave it at that. Others (myself included recently) have put some thermal pads on the four larger "chips" on the bottom of the card to help dissipate heat from those areas. I did see a slight drop in temps by doing so, although cutting the little thermal pad piece to fit on those is a real pain.

Lets us know how it goes

 

sounds great
how about the retention mod?

 

Retention mod hasn't been an issue since I've been using the clevo cards with the clevo x-bracket and the clevo screws. If you use the screws that came with your 5870's and the retention bracket, then a lot of folks are doing the retention mod as well.

 

In my experience a stock cpu and undervolted cards have little or no throttling, can others confirm this please.

 

hi,everyone.
i have update my m17x with pair of 6970ms,however i seem to have a problem,it is not enabling second adapter,crossfire is not working,My driver version is ccc 11.8 not working xfire,change ccc 11.9,still not working xfire.
My problem is same with forum members "Greywolf22" and "jonnylcm15x",
what has anybody else got to try and help me rectify the problem?

 

Hi Kinkikings,

Very interesting that a few other folks are seeing the same problem. I just got confirmation that the card I had sent in for repairs was not damaged, so hopefully will be getting it back soon. Couple of questions, are you using Clevo 6970's? Are you using a crossfire cable from a pair of 4870s? or 5870s? Trying to see if there is some commonalities that might be causing us some issues.

Good luck to you and let me know if you come across any solutions as I will do the same

 

Ahh, so once I have altered the volts, I have no way of confirming the settings I entered are working? I just assume that since its reading 0.00 its ok?

 

Hey Grey, whats the next step for you? return the other card to check for Xfire problems since the one you sent back was fine? must be the other one... right? Have you incurred some costs for returning a non-faulty card?

 

I think the general consensus is that a stock extreme processor, and a undervolted 6970/6990 will greatly reduce the throttling. However it is impossible to say that there will be none.

Other varibles come in to play such as if you are running an external screen, or how bright your screen is, additional peripherals etc.

Basically it is because we are pushing the limits of the 240 watt adapter.....well not the adapter exactly but the limit of what the BIOS believes should be the max.

Although I should point out that I do not own a pair of 6970/6990's.....I have just been following the thread very closely

 

douse, do you experience throttling when running both wprime/prime95 with o'ced 920xm and furmark with o'ced 5870cf simultaneously?

 

Yep, that was how I first discovered the problem.

In fact, I can get slight throttling with a fully o'ced CPU and GPU just running Furmark.

Pushes past 250/260 watts and I can see fps drops with corresponding drops in power consumption on the watt meter.

 

I have noticed GPU throttling running Furmark with my 285m GTX SLI (no overclock) with the 940xm @ 5% drives me mad! i'm nearly about to purchase the 6790m on ebay

btw has anyone in AUS got any of these cards?

 

Anyone has an idea where to find a pair of HD6970Ms/HD6990Ms in the UK?

 

Try UK Service Centre, I'll PM details.

 

Thanks Douse, +rep for the info.

 

The UK clevo service center are a little on the dear side, but do offer a 6 month warranty. I went for a pair from Eurocoms ebay outlet "upgradeyourlaptop"

 

will my 285m heatsinks & clamp fit the ones off ebay? i need to get un-soldered heatsink mount points right?

 

If anyone is curious, eurocom.com never responded to my query regarding warranty....

 

Hiya jus7in,
Did you get a chance to see if your voltage mod is working? I haven't had a chance to alter mine yet.

If they're all good and proven, could you post the altered bios files? That'll save others (me) the trouble of changing them. Btw, Did you go for .96V?

P.

 

They also never responded to any of my questions, but on ebay, eurocom reseller replied to me that their cards have 3 months warranty.

Anyway, i see 6970 and 6990 slowly not a best deal for us, simply, becouse of radeon 7 series higher performance and lower power consumption witch would allow us to run our r2's without any throttling.

But if it turns out they will not be supported in r2's (sour!), we will be forced to rush for 6990's as i am now - thinking

 

Yes altered the Vbios to 0.96v across the board on clock info 00-07 from whatever settings they were to 0.96v (ranging from 0.95v to 1.1v). Clock info seems to have various clock speeds for GPU & RAM and what current it should draw at that point, so thats what I changed, I should at this point mention I am by no means a pro in this field but willing to try.

Would gladly post for you to try if you want to test em, but it quite easy to do.

 

I never thought about changing other voltages. I only changed the 3D clock values since thats what it will use when under stress when gaming. But dropping the voltages else where would probably also drop idle temps, which would be a nice benefit.

 

Just done a vantage run @19455 and max temps were 58 degrees

 

Hey Jus7in, so far only shipping costs back and forth (so roughly another 60-70 dollars USD). As far as next steps, I haven't quite decided. I'm torn between buying another set of cards and doing the testing myself, and then selling any card that doesn't work in crossfire as a single 6970 only card (with a discount of course).

I don't plan to send the other card in for testing. The cost of the shipping is beginning to overtake the cost of what a new cards would be. So any testing will either be done by myself with another set of cards, or possibly sending them to someone like aarpcard who has a set running to see if he can determine where the problem is.

Guess I'm a bit discouraged, but not quite ready to give up

Will definitely keep you all posted on what my next steps are when I get my other card back from RMA, it's been there a month so anxious to at least get it back in my hands.

 

You mean not Yet

 

hahaha hopefully sooooon

 

Hi, Dan, the current heatsink will fit, they are all the same in the M17x R2, but I can't be 100% sure about the X plate.

 

Hi everyone,
Sorry havent been on for a while, I have finally decided to go for a single 6990m it took so long as I first went for a processor upgrade to a 920xm cant wait for the 6990m gonna be the last upgrade to this laptop hope it all goes well. Sorry to ask this but been reading up through all the post and I am finding useful stuff all over the place was just wondering what pads I would need for the ram on the card and is mx-2 thermal paste fine for the gpu. also do I need to flash the 6990 bios or is it plug and play from mythlogic?

Thanks again,
Warren

 

at room temperature? thats impossible!

 

anybody know an actual accurate release date or estimated release date for the new series graphics cards from ati&nvidia?

 

at the end of this year amd should relase first AMR 7 series cards

 

wow, this is even cooler than my 5870cf, are you sure it's not 85C ?

 

Hey Ahmadmud,

Were you able to install your cards yesterday? Any updates on how it went?

 

Actually i didn't receive the cards the cards yet, they will arrive tomorrow.
But Just received my Kill-a-watt today, and so I ran some tests to observe the power consumption of :
5870 XF @ 1.1v 850/100, with 920xm stock voltage @ 2% o'c(136.3 MHz) 26/26/25/25, these parameters were constant while I was modifying the TDP from 50W to maximum of 85W, ambient temp is 76F.

I was running furmark multi gpu build 1.82, stability test, xtreme burn and post fx on 1280x1024, all other is defult, along with wprime 2.03 1024M test on all 8 threads, simultaneously to check when the power throttling start => getting ready to receive the 6990s
Here are the results:
XF cofig + TDP set = min~maxW (power range from reading on kill-a-watt)
5870XF + 50W TDP = 211~250W
5870XF + 55W TDP = 217~257W
5870XF + 60W TDP = 222~263W
5870XF + 62W TDP = 232~267W
5870XF + 70W TDP = 235~281W
5870XF + 80W TDP = 238~288W
5870XF + 85W TDP = 258~295W

I was monitoring the temps on TS, and GPU-z, and I noticed something strange, when I increased the TDP beyond 70W, gpu load on gpuz changed from 100% to 0%, while the FPS on furmark stayed the same and the power consumption also didn't change.
Therefore, I wasn't able to notice power throttling because I was anticipating that as I exceed 250W, it will throttle back to below 200W which didn't happen even at highest manageable TDP which was 85W. I couldn't go further because I was limited by my temps which had already reached 100C at this level. I need to repaste my cpu or at least try to readjust the tension on the heat sink.

One more thing, I didn't experience any shut downs or reduction in power to below 210W even under highest reachable TDP.
here is a pic of what the gpu load on gpu-z looked like:

ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting

if anyone knows what exactly is happening here, or whether i am facing power throttling or not, please inform me.

 

Well, if you did not experience throttling then you are very lucky.

To be reaching 258~295W without throttling is basically unheard of.

Although, the fact the GPU load dropped indicates some form of throttling.....what FPS were you hitting in Furmark?

Also, what BIOS are you running?

EDIT:: Can I just say that it is strange that your GPU Temp #1 is only hitting 69 degree's under full load in Furmark.....doesn't crossfire need full screen? Please tell me if this has changed?

EDIT:: Just for the record, I was hitting 34 fps in furmark, and fps drops took me around 31/32 fps

 

running A10 Modded BIOS and getting 20FPS on furmark

the load decrease, but FPS and gpu/cpu clocks stayed the same, what exactly is the power throttling??

 

Yeah, my single 6970M is a HEATER. Even with the retention mod I hit high 70s at stock clocks. If I OC the crud out of it and play Warhead, I hit 90C.

 

i am getting a check in the next couple of days and am gonna have some money to kill who have you guys been getting your 6990 from.I dont wanna have to read all 200 pages of this thread.

 

There was a user selling them for dirt cheap, but that's not happening anymore. Mythlogic sells them, but you're going to spend~$1,100 for a pair. Or you could buy a pair of 6970s from Eurocom for about $800.

 

the maximum i reach on everything benches games etc is 77 C for both my 6970s. i played crysis 2 dx11 ultra for more than 1 hour and reached 68 maximum.

as we talked about that before power throttle can even shut down your machine. but anyway dont expect 6990s to be the same case as 5870s